Arctic explorer’s ship to return to Norway after 90 years in Nunavut

CAMBRIDGE BAY, Nunavut – Nearly 90 years after she sank into Nunavut’s Arctic seabed, the ship that took famed explorer Roald Amundsen on his second polar expedition is finally ready to sail back home to Norway.

Now only sea ice in the Northwest Passage stands in the way of the Maud beginning her way home to a hero’s welcome near the Norwegian city where she was built.

“It’s all depending on the development of the ice,” said Jan Wanggaard, the Norwegian who’s been working for the last six years on the project. “It looks like it can happen within the next couple weeks.”

The Maud was built in 1917 for Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole. He also made groundbreaking expeditions in the Canadian Arctic, including the first successful transit of the Northwest Passage.

Amundsen intended to use the specially strengthened Maud — named after Norway’s then-queen — to drift across the North Pole while frozen into moving sea ice. After two failed attempts, she was sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1925.

Three years later, the ship sank while moored in shallow water just off Cambridge Bay. For decades, parts of her hull protruded above the waves.

In 2015, Wanggaard and his crew successfully refloated Maud’s 40-metre oaken hull. It now sits aboard the barge that will carry her back across the Atlantic.

The crew has been working to clean the ship and ready her for the voyage.

“She looks really good,” said Wanggaard. “Everybody who can see her is impressed by the state of the ship.”

It wasn’t all smooth sailing. The Norwegian efforts were initially opposed by the people of Cambridge Bay, who thought the ship should stay where she was.

Then the Canadian government wouldn’t give the group an export permit, even though the Norwegians have legal title to the hulk. They finally got the permit by default when no Canadians presented a salvage plan.

But those rough waters have calmed.

Last June, the mayor of Asker — the Norwegian city near where the Maud was built — came to Cambridge Bay to visit and thank her Nunavut counterpart. Wanggaard said his colleagues have formed strong relationships in the community.

“Somehow, you become part of the society for a period,” he said. “We like to be close to nature and the Inuit tradition is to live close to nature, so we have got some good friends among the Inuit.”

Wanggaard admits it’s a thrill to tread the same deck once commanded by Amundsen.

“It’s peculiar, but we’re getting used to it,” he said.

“We have our moments when we can imagine a hundred years back and how it was for the people to be there. We know most of the crew very well from what we have read in the history books.”

This summer, the Maud will make it as far as Greenland. She will return to her homeland the following year to eventually be housed in Asker in a museum built especially for her.

Amundsen’s two other ships, the Fram and Gjoa, are already in a museum.

Although the Maud will soon leave Canada forever, traces of her remain.

She was the model for one of Canada’s most famous Arctic ships — the fabled RCMP schooner the St. Roch, the first ship to sail around North America.

Canada’s primary Arctic research vessel is named for the Maud’s original captain.

— By Bob Weber in Edmonton. Follow him on Twitter at @row1960.